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WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal had been lost, according to government investigators. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence. As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were erased, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The revelation is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. George...

Government investigators say IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency’s tea party scandal had been lost. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence.The report is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. …

Mark interviews Ted Cruz on TPP, AP, other issues.

The perils of the progressive plan to build an electoral majority by fighting inequality. A century of new rules—from the advent of direct presidential primaries, to the end of the seniority system in Congress, to conservative Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance—has dramatically eroded the power that official party structures once exercised over politicians and their platforms. Today, an informal network of donors, policy and political groups, media outlets, consultants, labor unions, and star politicians determine in what broad directions both sides of the spectrum will evolve over the long term. Many of these players don't actually identify themselves by...

Voting against the speaker’s reelection may have cost one Iowa Republican his seat. John Boehner has found ways to punish the fractious conservatives who have formed into a thorn in his side since attempting a coup at the beginning of the year. Through means both petty and significant, Boehner has made his displeasure felt while trying to lead the broader conference in a series of high-profile legislative fights. A number of rebel backbenchers have had their overseas travel curtailed and their committee posts threatened or even taken away. But the treatment of one lawmaker in particular stands out: Colleagues worry...

Denmark’s election results reveal similarities between America and Denmark and the potential for an emergent conservative trend in the U.S. and Canada Looks like Denmark’s tea party faction, the Danish People’s party (Dansk Folkkparti) has re emerged in great strength on the backs of social disappointment voters, angry over spending socialist funds on known terrorists, fumbled immigration, and the usual list of issues ranging from social services through trade, on to death and taxes. What Denmark’s national election reveals is that Denmark’s voter support for the Danish People’s party, dumped what we in the USA would deem to be a...

She just can’t seem to understand why what she did is such a big deal! Rachel Dolezal may have resigned from her position as president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP — but the statement she released seems to suggest that she just doesn’t see why people think what she did is such a big deal. “I have always deferred to the state and national NAACP leadership and offer my sincere gratitude for their unwavering support of my leadership through this unexpected firestorm,” she wrote. Yes — “unexpected.” The white woman who spent years portraying herself as black —...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will be able to draw on some big-name praise if the GOP presidential nomination race ever comes down to a battle with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Bush’s son, George P. Bush, once called Cruz “the future of the Republican Party.” The comments were made in a 2012 statement Bush made in support of Cruz’s run in the Texas Republican Senate primary, long before Cruz and Bush became rivals in the 2016 Republican primaries. Cruz became the first to seek the nomination with an official announcement in March. Jeb Bush made his campaign official Monday. “[Cruz]...

A s Jeb Bush formally enters the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, allow me to make a humble request of the former Florida governor: Please drop out. I appreciate that my request is impertinent in the extreme. Bush is by all accounts one of the most creative, thoughtful, and disciplined minds in American politics, and if anyone has earned the right to weigh in on the future direction of the GOP, it is him. I also appreciate that my timing is awful. To drop out immediately after entering the race would seem capricious, and no one wants to...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has an obvious route to the GOP nomination: get the more moderate Republicans who voted for John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 behind him this time. Bush, like McCain and Romney, is the kind of wealthy, establishment, conservative-but-not-too conservative figure the Republican Party traditionally nominates. Bush's father and brother also both won the party's nomination, but those are not great analogies to 2016. George H. Bush was the obvious heir apparent, as the sitting vice-president in 1988. During George W. Bush's 2000 primary, the GOP was not as divided as it is...

If progressives want to retake government, a full-throated war on public corruption is the key to everything. After one of many trips to sub-Saharan Africa, Bono recalled that on his first visit there he thought its biggest problem was AIDS. Later, it seemed it was poverty; after many visits over many years he at last saw that it was corruption: the problem that kept all other problems from ever being solved. Corruption is hard to unmask, and harder to measure, but we know its cost to Africa is truly staggering. One study puts it at a quarter of the continent’s...

And I do mean “noted.” With the possible exception of Steve Schmidt, no Republican advisor is better known to the right for sneering at the right than John Weaver. Re-read this old post, written when Weaver was helping to steer Huntsman 2012 to a third-place flameout in New Hampshire, for some of his greatest hits. He advised McCain in 2000, when Maverick was at his media-friendly right-baiting zenith, then caught on with Huntsman during the last cycle to try the ol’ what-our-party-really-needs-is-a-better-base approach again. He’s known for being a difficult boss, losing lots of races (with some notable successes, like...

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has named anti-Shariah activist Kevin Kookogey as his state chairman for Tennessee. Kookogey, a former chairman of the Williamson County Republican Party, was unsuccessful in his bid to coalesce tea party support for a primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander last year....

Obama To Circumvent Congress With ‘Gag Order’ On Firearm Coverage by AWR Hawkins 7 Jun 2015 On June 1 Breitbart News reported on Obama’s Spring 2015 “Unified Agenda.” The gun control measures contained therein which were to be passed by executive fiat. Since that time Representatives like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-4th) have placed riders on a DOJ appropriations bill to stop portions of the executive gun control push in its tracks. Now the NRA-ILA is revealing that the Obama administration is working behind the scenes to stifle reporting on firearms. From the NRA-ILA: Even as news reports have been highlighting...

The IRS’s director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division testified Wednesday that the tax agency set up a special team with hundreds of lawyers to handle the probe into whether Tea Party groups were targeted, but repeatedly said she had no idea how it operated. Mary Howard, who also works as the head Freedom of Information Act officer in the IRS, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that once the “special project team” was created and operational, she never saw requests for information. Asked who was on the team, she said: “My first hand knowledge of...

Politics today seems to be dominated by an “either you’re in or you’re out mentality.” If you’re a good Republican, a good Christian, and a good conservative, then you really can’t support gay marriage—at least, that’s what I’m constantly being told. “We can’t redefine an institution that’s been around for thousands of years,” opponents of marriage equality say. “To do so would be to radically transform the way society has always understood marriage. That’s just not what conservatism is all about.” But is that really true? It seems to me the heroes of the modern conservative movement— individuals such as...

In the past week, several more Republicans, with varying degrees of gravitas, have joined an already crowded field of contenders. Lindsey Graham became the fourth sitting senator to enter the race. Former New York Gov. George Pataki is in, too — despite not having been in office in nearly a decade. Rick Santorum recently announced as well, looking to springboard off of a 2012 runner-up finish. Mike Huckabee is going even farther back, hoping to springboard off of his 2008 runner-up status. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has made it clear he intends on entering. His counterpart in Michigan, Rick Snyder,...

The GOP prez field's newest entrant makes up for his domestic RINOism with an off-the-rails foreign policy.Senator Lindsey Graham entered the presidential race yesterday. Unless something dramatic happens, he will be sworn in as president in January 2017. Wait. No? The opposite of that. Unless something dramatic happens, Lindsey Graham will not be sworn in as president in January 2017. Yes. Graham’s candidacy does seem poised, though, for one of those waves of boosterism in the mainstream media that translates into precisely zero increased support among Republican primary voters. (Hi, Jon Huntsman!) Political reporters and writers like Lindsey Graham. He’s...

The FBI is operating a small air force to spy on Americans Associated Press Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker, Associated Press Jun. 2, 2015, WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned. The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency...

Republican presidential candidates gathered last month at the Oklahoma City Cox Conference Center, just a few blocks from the site of what was the Alfred R. Murrah Federal Building. Two decades ago, anti-government militia sympathizer Timothy McVeigh blew it up in what he called an act of war against the U.S. government. It was the worst crime of domestically bred terrorism in American history. McVeigh was executed in 2001, but since then, some of his militia ideals have gone mainstream and even been introduced as laws in many states, including Oklahoma. Legislators in dozens of states have submitted proposals to...